Collected Poems of Arjava


With Jade-White-Petals

For the moon-pale feet of Laelia the still night sheddeth dew,
Or at noon in the white-rose garden - domed with a trance of blue —
Blossoms with jade-white petals before her feet are shed
And fall from the dreaming rose-trees, with never a leaf of red.

The foam-pale hands of Laelia that weave my web of dream, —
How they pluck white water-lilies afloat on a languid stream,
And how from the strings of a zither they slowly waken a strain
Lustrously pale as the starlight when the air has been washed by the rain.

In a moth-like silence I gather blooms of the night for her brow;
As in a shrine men proffer trophies with prayer and vow,
I would weave a crown of whiteness, a glimmer in the dream-charged air,
And raise it in suppliant hands to the dim darkness of her hair.

Your name is fading music upon my worship's mouth;
It spills in languorous fragrance from lilies of the South;
It is the odorous night-flower wherewith your locks are bound, —
Or the moon-pale soul of roses caught in a mesh of sound.

December 5, 1936


For feet of a moth-paleness

There, in the grey twilight, on the verge of the magical wood
Turn, Laelia, and question the gathering shade
With the eyes of inwardness: not the mind had understood
Nor those eyes with the long lashes, of dust and mournful ashes made.

Then face once more the mossed path glimmering far into the dim
Onwardness of Daywane; and over the waves
Of shadowiness we too, as birds entranced, swim
And a faint mazed shoreline follow till we enter midnight's hollow caves.

Here stand the adamantine pillars all alone,
Ringed with the opal walls, and here milk-white
Jade floor for feet of a moth-paleness and an empty throne…
Whereon the slow moon rises and casts in new disguises Light.

December 19, 1936


Phoenix

The sky of night is but the ebon door,
star-golden with nails of fire:
beyond, the inimaginable floor
is flecked with glory from the kindled pyre
of gift immortal in the mortal giving
and frith serene 'cross war,
wingworthiness and alchemy of living, —
flooding with trust our gloom-sad corridor,

The phoenix egg of quintessential light
Death in the desert place
vainly encompasses: beyond their night
loves the archetypal Form of lover's race
in Whom the shadow-barriers have vanished
and prison walls of name
come not between (for blended incense banished
their wraith in ashes winnowed by the flame.

A wan and worn earth sleeps in warless grave;
Arabian phoenixland
fossils unhabited shell - so save
toil of aspiring will to understand!
Other the thymy wakefulness that beckoned
Phaedrus on wingward way —
child of the Sun whose wakening memories reckoned
the wing-bright peace of Solar Yesterday.

Vivid as almandine, world-hallowing feet
flame from the sunrise lair.
Uprush of wings matching the paths they beat
of crystalline blue diamond thoroughfare.
Tranquil the phoenix-poise of golden crested,
fleece-white and sorrowless
head of the undefeated vision who had nested
where on Time's moments looms the Everlivingness.

October 13, 1932


Phoenix-Offered

(Suggested in part by Yeats' line: -
"And lingered in the hidden desolate place,
Where the last Phoenix died
And wrapped the flames above his holy head;")

Heart of the holy Phoenix, grant my prayer
to be thy hierophant:
then in the desert precincts I prepare
beggarly tokens of Love's regnitude,
high sphered in spirit-lovely adamant, -
dogworthy crumbs of the ambrosial food
lifted in lordly rites by blissful celebrant
amid the joy-thrilled firmaments of being.
From wan and wind-swayed ashes came the victor, phoenix-renewed;
so from the dim earth symbol rise up, O Rose of seeing.
Concealing silver calyx of the Rose,
no more you wholly hide
the myriad-shaded mystery that flows
in crimson whorls of splendour round the pure
centrality of drossless gold beside
the nectar wells of wonder and the sure
petal-breathed tang of changeless love time-verified.
Surely this petal-sweetened breeze came flowing
out of the sheer unfathomed vastness to procure
rumour of the Undying Rose from finite clay upgrowing?
But now through noonlit roadstead swings the sun
in height's tranquillity;
Time's brabble pauses - as a beck may run
into a sky-clear pool, held dreaming-deep;
Day's minute course tangents Eternity
and all unshapely thought is put to sleep.
Veiled in a flicker of wings, from that immensity
on delicate azure pinions calm descending,
he crowns, Prometheuswise, life with resurgent leap
of a quenchless flamefraught worship, - phoenix-lit fire unending.


Across triumphant acres of the night

Across triumphant acres of the night
Slow-swung pinions of the unborn dream
To the hidden daybreak pursue primeval flight.

Chartless unfrontiered aeons of the dark,
On their lonely silence breaks no morning theme, —
Our dreams have held the Promethean spark.

But half descried, the dawn-lit peaks of joy, —
There, living hues shall blend in a rainbow stream,
And there no sundering thought can enter or destroy.

January 8, 1935


Hieratic

(Symbols of the Inner Vital World)

Under the amethyst tree
In a cavern of ocean
Pale limbs of the daughters of the sea
Weave their mystical motion.

There was no rumour from the land
Of reef's wave-grapple:
Their leader shed from her right hand
The gleam of a ruby apple.

Each other moon-pale maid
Bore, heaped and mellow,
Pomegranates carved from lunar jade
On topaz salvers yellow.

No date for steps they dance,
For song no dimming;
Time will reive not their beauty but enhance
Joy's glyph those feet are limning.

November 17, 1934


Friendship

As tyrant eats the selfhood of his slave,
As captive strikes no root in loneliness,
Must draughtsmanship avoid all figure save
These two, - the centreless circumference,
And that self-weariness of Present whence
Nor silvern hopes nor pure gold memories gave
Access to one, friend-welcome, fetterless?
High dreams have limned the triptych, scored the stave.

Now stave is set with ampler harmonies;
Ulysses has resailed from Ithaca, —
To fairest apples of Hesperides,
Beyond our drossed horizons, traveller;
And Argo's prow is aimed for Colchis Fleece:
Foam-plash of silver....courage...shimmering peace.

June 18, 1933


The single prayer

On tiptoe dimly I now take my way
Through the sweet-scented forests of a world
I cannot claim, in which I have no say,
— From which even now I may in thought be hurled.

I will not break one twig lest sap should bleed,
Nor brush the leaves that quiver and shrink and fold;
Not one dream-petal from the future deed
By my dream-roving shall be earthward rolled.

I'd step too lightly for the sleeping dew
To feel an alien presence and depart.
— Grant that the dawn-clear joy may tremble through,
Limn the soft-splendoured wideness of his heart.

February 13, 1938


The divine Love

Surging softly on the pebbles of the brim
To that ocean-swaying under the quiet moon,
Wave-syllables quicken enchantments dim
Through this long hour of midnight's nether-room.

Far forgotten now the heaviness of day,
The unreal shadows and all things that die;
Immortal prescience on the pearl-white way
Where the moon's magic drips down from the sky.

Vision fails and hearing gropes to seize no more
Foam silver-shining, dream-notes of the wave:
The hushed soul mirrored, echoed, gained the shore
Of Light self-offered, of taintless Love that gave.

January 14, 1935


(TO BE COMPLETED)